Nuveen Barwari’s expansive studio practice involves gathering and repurposing artifacts from her community, such as worn Kurdish clothes, fabric, and used rugs, alongside materials from America, to investigate the multiplicity of materials, their inherited histories, and cultural meanings. Textiles in her work function as tools of resistance, embodying the fluidity and adaptability of language. Rather than focusing on what is lost in translation, Barwari explores the shapes and symbols that emerge from living between clashing cultures, languages, and materials. Her practice draws deeply on Kurdish poetry, particularly the dual interpretations found in its floral motifs—political and romantic—connecting ideas of place, body, and identity. Through a combination of collage, painting, textiles, and installation, she investigates the intricacies of assimilation, material culture, and the contradictions of diasporic identities. Her work often moves between the decorative and the interrogative, as she unravels cultural symbols, redraws borders, and reimagines the space between homeland and host land.
Barwari’s practice is also deeply influenced by the imaginary and world-building elements present in Kurdish poetry, where fragmented and imagined landscapes are tied to resistance and survival. In her work, she mirrors this poetic construction of worlds by piecing together architectural fragments, shapes, and textiles, creating new spaces that question the boundaries between reality and imagination, home and exile. Through this, she invites viewers into a reconstructed world that blurs the lines between memory and invention, much like the way Kurdish poetry reimagines the homeland through a symbolic, often dreamlike lens.
Nuveen Barwari was born in Nashville, TN and grew up in Duhok, Kurdistan. She received her MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2022 and her B.S in Art from Tennessee State University in 2019. Barwari has shown at Zg Gallery (IL), NGBK Gallery in Berlin, Germany, Duhok Gallery, in Duhok, Kurdistan, Ortega y Gasset Projects (NY), Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery (TN), and Art Toronto Canada’s Art fair. Barwari was the 2023 fellow in the Skidmore Art’s Department’s Workspace Residency Program. Her work has been featured in the Nashville Scene, New American Painting, Yahoo Nachrichten Deutschland, Gazete Duvar, and Botan Times. Barwari currently resides in Albany, NY.
instagram: @nuveenbarwari
email: bnuveen@gmail.com